Qumran Where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered

1. QumranWhere the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered

2. Luke 1:57-66, 80 57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. 58Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. 60But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ 61They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ 62Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. 63He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. 64Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. 65Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. 66All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him… 80 The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.

3. Bible Study • Why was Zechariah not able to speak? (See Luke 1:20) • What did the people want to name the infant? Why? • According to Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist grew up in the desert. Some speculate that he might have been brought up in the isolated community at Qumran

5. Well before the time of Abraham, wandering tribes of nomads inhabited the desert lands of the near East. Today, the only people that preserve this age old traditional way of life are the tribes of Muslim Arabs called Bedouins.

6. Bedouin’s are shepherds constantly flowing back and forth with their flocks across the man-made borders of modern nation-states. With their animals’ wool they weave tents and rugs and clothing. Nowadays, they tend to trade their traditional handicrafts in local markets and purchase mass-produced clothes for the whole family.

7. Bedouin actively preserve their old and multi-faceted culture by paying music on simple hand made instruments and traditional story telling around the fire. Many of these stories, passed down from generation to generation, contain teachings of honor, righteousness and the deeds of their ancestors, like Abraham-Ibrahim (as they call him).

8. The Dead Sea Scrolls, now on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem were discovered inside earthenware jars in a high cliffside cave at Qumran in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd boy searching for a stray goat.Video

9. Excavations reveal the settlement and caves of the Essenes, the Jewish sect that authored the scrolls that included books of the Old Testament, Apocrypha and the Essene’s own texts.

10. The Essenes, a breakaway Jewish sect, first came tow Qumran in 150 BC to escape the liberalism and decadence they believed was corrupting their fellow Jews. They cultivated dates, tended sheep and studied religious texts until they were disbanded by the Roman invaders in 68 AD. They were ascetics, and paid great attention to rigtual bathing and purity.

11. The Essenes likely copied (wrote) the scrolls now called the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls include the oldest copies of the Old Testament ever found and show that the Bible we know today is almost identical to the one studied around the time of Jesus Christ. Some of the texts are commentaries that made the Bible relevant to their own days.

12. The texts describe a community preparing for the coming of the Messiah, who believe they are witnessing the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies, who practice ritual bathing, share their wealth and conduct a daily sacred meal presided over by a priest.